


A Matter of Time

by the_nerd_word



Category: The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Alternate Canon, Ganon is an Evil Shithead, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gerudo Link, Link Raised by the Gerudo, Trans Female Character, gerudo, what's new there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 14:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4749566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_nerd_word/pseuds/the_nerd_word
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hyrule is falling, Ganon's power is unchecked, and Link, raised as a girl by one of the Gerudo, is only an outsider to events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Matter of Time

**Author's Note:**

> This story was based on Tek-kie's wonderful [artwork and prompt](http://die-historic.tumblr.com/post/113361785094/tek-kie-ok-heres-the-deal-link-being-found-by-a). I attempted to include world events as they might have happened if Link had never interacted with each canon environment/dungeon.

The pinnacle was sun-kissed, outlined against the sky like some golden, weathered tooth. Link climbed its surface as though she was familiar with every shallow cranny. She was a child of the wind-whipped grit of the desert, all blondes and tans and bronzes, all confidence and deftness and resilience. Sand was caked under her short nails, and the natural tracks of her skin were streaked with sweat and dirt.

She hoisted herself over the edge of the pinnacle with a small grunt. The top was relatively flat, and Link could feel its surface transfer heat to the soles of her ankle-high boots. She walked to the center and raised one hand to shield her eyes from the worst of the sun, looking east.

The horizon was darkening, morphing into some black, billowing front over the general location of Hyrule Castle. Death Mountain’s peak was barely visible across the distance, but its ring of smoke, streaked with unnerving shades of red, swirled like a beckoning storm.

Link frowned as she tried to determine if the darkness was spreading, only absently noting the brightly swathed woman who reached the top of the pinnacle to stand beside her.

“I’m getting too old for this,” the Gerudo muttered with a sigh, briskly wiping her hands together to clear some of the dirt.

Link smiled, but she kept her eyes on the mountain range in the distance. “Hardly, mother,” she murmured. Her tone was a well-rehearsed habit, quiet and carefully neutral. Caution normally kept her silent, because tradition in the desert was not kind to males, but around the woman who had raised her, who had saved an abandoned infant from the deep cold of the woods to live and grow up among the warm stretches of sand, Link felt comfortable sharing a few words. “Not _that_ old.”

The Gerudo scoffed and flipped her ponytail from one shoulder to the other. “Brat,” she said without any real scorn. “Your bandeau is slipping.”

Link reached down and adjusted the modest slip of cloth without really looking, wriggling her torso until the thumb-sized ruby at the top of the bandeau was comfortably settled against the center of her chest. “Snug.”

“You’ll have to be fitted for new clothes soon,” the Gerudo agreed with a nod, her stare considering. Scrutinizing, too, after so many watchful years. “You’re getting broader. At least you’re not very tall.”

Link huffed out a little breath but otherwise only shrugged. In the distance, red streamers, markers for the treacherous desert, flapped with the wind. She watched them briefly, noting the way they reached toward the east when the air snapped them straight. Like scarlet arms giving direction and frenetic warning. After a moment, Link gestured to the horizon and murmured, “S’getting worse.”

Her mother nodded once, looking grim. “The volcano concerns me the most. If Death Mountain erupts, the ash could easily spread this far.” She swore under her breath, but she sounded resigned. “We’ll have to post a watch.”

Link glanced toward the rings of smoke, but her gaze was drawn back to the castle’s spires, toward the darkness that shrouded the sky above the castle. “What do you think is happening?”

The Gerudo hesitated before answering, shaking her head. “I don’t know,” she said, the words a little too quick, a little too hollow. Link searched her expression, looking for something past that obvious lie, but the woman pointedly avoided eye contact.

“Rumors—”

“You should know better than to put faith in those, Link,” the Gerudo chided without any real heat. She crossed her arms, and sunlight reflected off the jewel-encrusted hilt of the petite dagger carefully sheathed at her bicep. “Gossip hardly changes the situation, anyway.”

Link pursed her lips, knowing that it wouldn’t help to accuse her mother of avoidance. Besides, she knew her mother was bound to have heard the same chatter. The women at the fortress spoke of a shadowed man leading an attack on Hyrule’s capital, a hulking monster of a being who cloaked his efforts in dark magic. The knowledge was there, the certainty recognizable in shared glances and the distracted, agitated signs of pacing from those on patrol. “Ganondorf,” Link said quietly, hesitantly.  

 For a moment, her mother didn’t say anything, but then she closed her eyes and let out a slow breath. “He was born among us,” she began, hedging any opinion. “A child of this century.” Suddenly, her eyes snapped open, sharp and protective. “A man. You understand? You have to be careful. Fear can make people do stupid things. Even the Gerudo.”

“I always am,” Link assured her, uncomfortable in her own skin (not for the first time, certainly not the last). She fidgeted briefly and ran the backs of her hands down her sides. “Legend warns he’ll seize power.”

“So legend says.” A pause, a sigh. “He’ll terrorize the kingdom, but he’ll always be ours,” her mother agreed bitterly.  

“And the people?” Link asked hesitantly, thinking of populations she had never visited, imagining stone walls and mountainous passages and active waterfalls and the types of families that might live within those places. The different tragedies that might strike them.

“What about them?”

“Do you think they’re okay?”

Her mother shrugged, though she still looked bitter. “I don’t know. They’re not our concern.”

That didn’t sit well with Link, made unease pool in the center of her stomach. She tried to reconcile this, tried to let out some of the tension with a steady exhale and some tacit agreement that Hyrule could defend itself, but instead she found herself whispering, “Maybe it’s our duty to help them.”

Her mother surprised Link by sounding nervous. “Don’t get that nonsense in your head.”

There was a nearby scuff, a shift of loose sand nearly lost to the general murmur of the desert, then another Gerudo, clad in a traditional patrol uniform, hoisted herself over the edge of the pinnacle. “Maro,” she addressed Link’s mother, her breath fluttering the purple veil over her lips, “we need you back at the fortress.”

Link’s mother stood up straighter and leveled her gaze with a precise frown. “What’s wrong?”

“Hylia is losing depth,” the guard reported succinctly. “We think something might be preventing free flow from the Zoras.”

Maro blinked, looking momentarily at a loss, before her scowl returned in force. She spared a quick glance toward the east. “What about the river system?”

“It’s still flowing, but it’s also lower than usual. At least thirty feet below the bridge.”

“Have you told Nabooru?”

The guard hesitated and shifted where she stood. “No,” she admitted. “I didn’t think it prudent— You know how she’s been.” Those last words were barely voiced, a confession accompanied by unease.

Link looked aside, recalling the last time she had seen Nabooru, remembering the eerily windless night and how the leader of the Gerudo had spent hours pacing on the edges of the fortress rooftops; heels sometimes scooting inches toward open air, golden eyes too bright, offering little huffs of breath but never anything to say. Like a woman wanting to jump. Like a woman outside of her own mind.

Maro sighed, though it was short and restrained. “I’ll try to talk with her. In the meantime, send two scouts to investigate the lake. Take your own team upriver; if the current from the Zoras is stemming, we’ll have to rely on the reservoirs between here and Hyrule Field. I want them guarded.”

“Should I order sentries by the valley entrance?”

Maro shook her head. “I’ll do it. I don’t expect we’ll get much traffic, but if worst comes to worst we can always tear the damn bridge down...”

They turned to descend the pinnacle, two true Gerudo, and Link was left feeling rooted to the spot, intrusive but too outside of events. She had been accepted by the tribe, but that acceptance wasn’t based on truth, and she wondered how long it would take before the foundation crumbled. Before her features betrayed her, or silence became impossible.

The desert wasn’t her home, even if she was its adopted child, even if she had managed to thrive in its hearth. The risk was high and hardly fair, but it was all she knew.

Link forced herself to dismiss those feelings like she always did.

Something glimmered in the air, swirling on a low, lazy current before settling among the short rocks nearby. It was thin and insubstantial, and its edge was darkened with soot, though the rest of it shined under the sun, like a pearly film crisscrossed by filaments. Link wondered if it was some kind of insect wing.

“Link? What is it?” Maro asked suddenly from a few feet away, and Link realized she had been caught staring at the rocks. “Oh,” as she focused on the little thing, “the fire, perhaps.”

Link frowned in confusion, glancing from the wing to her mother. She shrugged, silently questioning, conscious of the other Gerudo still nearby.

“We received a report two days ago about fires in the Kokiri Forest,” her mother explained, almost gently. “I don’t know if they’re from natural causes or if he…” She pursed her lips. Shrugged after a moment, dismissive behind the distance. “I guess the wind managed to carry some debris this far.”

Link didn’t remember the forest, the place she had supposedly been found all those years ago, but she felt a sudden chill, an iciness along her skin that belied the desert’s heat.  Somewhere in the east, across miles of red canyons and stretching plains, the woodlands were burning.

She couldn’t look away from the burnt little wing nestled between the rocks. She stared at the glittering appendage like it was important, scratching the back of her gloved hand and feeling disoriented while the surrounding desert continued to shift its sands in indifference. Link wondered if she was losing a home across all those miles, a place among the leaves she could have known and loved.

Darkness swirled in the distance. A cloudy black maelstrom, a glimpse of the future. The east beckoned, unanswered. 


End file.
